Saving game & replacing units

[Shakerfish]

Hello All,

I am new to this forum and this is my first post.

Is it not possible to save the game during ground combat? If not I would highly recommend making this change to the game programming. Respectfully… My sons won’t play the game unless they can save during combat. Me… I’m still trying, but I can’t figure out how to replace my units and their getting killed too fast.

Any suggestions?


P.S. Developers… Thanks for all your time and hard work with UFOAI. It looks really good so far and wish you the best with further improvements.

[Mattn]

hi, first of all - thanks for the feedback

we decided long time ago, that there will be no mid-mission-saving in ufo:ai - just to prevent the "oh i killed one alien, let's save" and the "oh i lost some soldier - let's reload" behaviour. it's all or nothing :-)

best regards
martin

[ubequitz]

I agree with mattn, that a battlescape save/load feature would be contrary to the style of the game.

It is possible to complete most missions without losing any soldiers, using only basic equipment and within a few mission retries, but admittedly you have to be rather familiar with the game mechanics and maps to do this. It is intentional that you should lose at least a few soldiers in each stage of the campaign, if you didn't the aliens wouldn't be very menacing! If you are losing too many soldiers, you can always play the game on an easier setting. This gives you more money, soldiers and scientists (but the game-play remains the same AFAIK).

[Shakerfish]

OK, I can understand why you’ve eliminated game saves during combat, but it doesn’t appear you can hire more soldiers. Is this still under development? If so I can buy that and I’ll be happy to wait for newer releases.

P.S. I notice there are no sound effects when a unit is killed. Perhaps this is under development as well. Just thought I would suggest those agonizing blood curt ling sounds your soldier or the alien make can defiantly add to game play.

Thanks Again…

[Nikron]

anyway, you can save right before the mission start. you can use that too.

[Nevyn]

New soldiers can be hired inside the bases.  Under Hire Employees.  The unhired ones will have a cross next to them I believe, you change that to a tick and they are hired.

New ones arrive every month I believe for hiring, at the same time as the income from the regions.

[hamlet81_2]

Hi,

First, I would like to thank you for the great game u have created. It really comes close to the old trilogy and provides a fresh graphic.

I have played ufo 1-3 and I am kind of missing the possibility to save the game in combat situations. Today, I had to replay 3 missions again and again because Windows decided that noticing me about irrelevant updates is more important and therefore crashed the game.

While it makes really much fun playing the game, without an option to save in combat, it is too time consuming for me ;-)
If i knew more about c i could write a patch myself, but again, i am just a casual gamer.

Best regards

Hamlet81_2

[Kzwix]

Hi everyone,

I played RC6 for a few hours, and I felt some things were missing :

- The mid-combat save is a MUST. You won't prevent people from cheating if they want to, hexa editors and such are available, the game is open-source, etc... But, for someone who HAS to quit playing in a hurry (end of free time, storm closing in, power failure with computer holding on batteries...), it is extremely annoying to lose one hour worth of gameplay, especially if things went particularly well (you killed 20 aliens without a scratch, and now you have to either quit and lose all, or rush in the final areas to "finish" the survivors, forgetting all precautions just to save some real-life time.) This is, in my opinion, a big mistake to try and prevent people from saving. And saving in missions may be extremely useful to test some tactics, or weapons, quickly. So please reconsider.

- Where is personnel when you need it ? I mean, you are Earth's only hope of survival, an international institution financed by all major countries, and a good thing for all mankind. And how much people would like to work for you, especially when you need them ? No one, or nearly so. It is totally incredible ! I started a game in "normal" difficulty, and all I could hire was a lone soldier... Well, I can't imagine waiting a full month to replace casualties, or to reinforce my scientific or technic squads, when nearly all population on the planet should be draftable by us (mankind's survival is a good enough reason, I think, even for most pacifists). So why not ALWAYS present the commander with, say, 20 to 50 pre-selectionned people, in EVERY speciality ? And if you hire some, then they get "replaced" within a few hours (time for ordinances or secretaries to select the ones good enough to serve in Phalanx). I think this would be much more realistic. And after all, if aliens are supposed to be that deadly, then we should get lots of replacements... err, I meant reinforcements, of course We could even imagine seeing different people with different stats, and different experience, at different wages (a bit like mercenaries in Jagged Alliance). This last idea came to me because all armies on earth are NOT composed of total rookies, and an organization like Phalanx could be interested in using a few hardened veterans (even mercenaries, if needed), instead of green soldiers, even if it means paying twice the standard wages...

- For a UFO player, which I am (I was still playing it yesterday), the equipment buy-and-sell interface is quite puzzling. The direction for buying and selling seemed strange to me (buy by clicking left), but it's only a detail. On the other hand, I didn't understand why some material "lingered" on the "sold" side, like alien weapons. Are they only "mortgaged", not sold ? This would explain why the buying price is the same as the selling price, and why you can re-acquire them at will...
Ah, and why is the production price ten times higher than the buying price ? I understand that in UFO, production was maybe too good a way to earn money, but even with concerns of artisanal VS industrial, mass production, Phalanx should be able to use it's technological lead to generate profit. And at least sell the items it produced at the price it costed it, especially when these items are rare enough on Earth (and I guess a brand-new weapon, designed minutes ago in our top-notch labs would fit in this category...)

- In the Ufopedia, or in the Research screen, we can see some "Prerequisites". But it is not always written that those are such (for buildings, at least, in the pedia, you can see 'Base Entrance' (or whatever name it has), or 'Power Generator', and you have to guess it means you have to have built this before to build the other structure. In research screen, it is written there is a dependency, but is "stun ability" a technology ? (in the Stun rod technology description). If so, then maybe it would be good to rename it, as it is confusing. If it is not so, maybe it would be good to modify the description, for this ability not to appear as a prerequisite anymore


Well, I've finished criticising your nice work for now, so I'll wait for answers, or maybe hunt for some new things to describe as broken, unfitting, or just not cool enough (eh, my way of having fun :p)

Regards,
Kzwix - French game addict, programmer, and amateur translator.

[Irinami]

Hi everyone,

I played RC6 for a few hours, and I felt some things were missing :

- The mid-combat save is a MUST.

I disagree here. In non-emergency situations, you can always "Retry" at the end of a battle. In an emergency, well... save early and save often. An autosave before entering battle would be a good compromise.

- Where is personnel when you need it ?

In-character answer: Yes, you are an international organisation. Each nation has to look out for their own first and foremost. After that, then they can worry about loaning out troops to some half-baked "UN" style organization.

Out-of-character answer: Challenge. Would be pretty boring steamrolling an infantry brigade (soldier by soldier!!) over a handful of aliens.

Ah, and why is the production price ten times higher than the buying price ?

Handled here: Production vs. Purchasing

- In the Ufopedia, or in the Research screen, we can see some "Prerequisites". But it is not always written that those are such (for buildings, at least, in the pedia, you can see 'Base Entrance' (or whatever name it has), or 'Power Generator', and you have to guess it means you have to have built this before to build the other structure. In research screen, it is written there is a dependency, but is "stun ability" a technology ? (in the Stun rod technology description). If so, then maybe it would be good to rename it, as it is confusing. If it is not so, maybe it would be good to modify the description, for this ability not to appear as a prerequisite anymore

Bloody seconded!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Kzwix]

Hi everyone,

I played RC6 for a few hours, and I felt some things were missing :

- The mid-combat save is a MUST.

I disagree here. In non-emergency situations, you can always "Retry" at the end of a battle. In an emergency, well... save early and save often. An autosave before entering battle would be a good compromise.

Autosave before a battle would be a good option, yup. But what I'm saying is we shouldn't dictate HOW people get their fun. In fact, this is all about it, am I wrong ? So if some die-hard players play in impossible AND forbid themselves the use of save and load except when they stop playing, it is their right. If some others just make a "hero" team suffering no casualties from the start, and reload every time it is needed, to create a scenario of their own, well... Is it a problem to us ? After all, a simple statement somewhere, maybe in the manual, or in a popup window the first time you save during combat, telling the player that "saving and loading while in a combat is considered cheating by the game creators" would be enough to ensure "loyal" players do not abuse it, without being a nuisance to those it would have entertained.

You know, this ain't a competition : You don't have to make sure everybody plays in the same conditions, to be able to compare performance in the end. You just want people to enjoy their gaming experience, and for this, the more liberty they have, the more likely they are to enjoy it.

- Where is personnel when you need it ?

In-character answer: Yes, you are an international organisation. Each nation has to look out for their own first and foremost. After that, then they can worry about loaning out troops to some half-baked "UN" style organization.

Out-of-character answer: Challenge. Would be pretty boring steamrolling an infantry brigade (soldier by soldier!!) over a handful of aliens.

Your in-character answer makes sense, but don't tell me governments with hundreds of thousands soldiers cant spare a few hundreds for an international cause... So even if you cannot get the best ones, you shouldn't be short on soldiers, or only by lack of funds, not by lack of volunteers. What can be discussed, however, is the quality of those volunteers : You may have a few soldiers available, initially, and if you "consume" too many of them, you'll end up having only civilians to fill up the gaps (volunteers answering UN -or Phalanx- calls for personnel, NOT through government procedures). And if governments want to try something, they fund it AND cooperate. Else, they DO NOT fund it, and do not cooperate either

As for your out-of-character answer, I'd like to remind you that you still have a limited size in transports, and that I don't think you'll be able to add the crew of several crafts to attack one UFO, or terror site... So I don't think numbers would be a problem for challenge, especially if you do not get experienced soldiers as replacements. The only times where you would greatly benefit from having stockpiled loads of soldiers is when :

a) You get casualties, or woundeds : You may replace them instantly with stand-by soldiers

b) Your base gets attacked, and you have a legion ready to defend it.

Don't lose sight of the cost, there !  Recruitment costs are one thing, and they're not so cheap, but maintenance cost is a problem too. If the player wants to man every base with twenty guards, well, let him do it !  Let's just hope for him they're usefull, and not a bunch of lazy bastards playing cards, eating and drinking, having fun, and costig lots of money for naught while a few of their comrades actually fight a bloody war outside, under-equipped by lack of credits...

In UFO:EU (aka XCOM 1), you're not limited in the number of soldiers, scientists, or engineers you can hire. It does'nt make the game uninteresting or too easy, believe me. When you lose half your squad in each battle (and you do, at the hardest level, especially when fighting mutons with laser guns, or conventionnal rifles...), you HAVE difficulties to train people to a decent level, and you have difficulties recruiting enough people to replace casualties. But you have those difficulties because it costs money, not because nobody wants to join. And it is extremely painfull to get rid of that hard-earned artifact just to replace a squad, believe me

[papabob]

n UFO:EU (aka XCOM 1), you're not limited in the number of soldiers, scientists, or engineers you can hire. It does'nt make the game uninteresting or too easy

I have to agree here. And I think is a waste of resources to have models, stats and so on for every engineer and scientist in the base. The limits to purchase/recruit are pretty narrow. Why I can't spend one monthly asignation to hire 50 scientist to complete one key research and fire then later? It would cost much money, but it's the user money and users don't usually want to hear what they have to do.

I don't know why are so few "recruitables" in the actual gameplay, but why not have a fixed number of new scientists/engineers/soldiers each month? 5 or 10 oportunities to hire someone a month will allow the user to decide if he wants to have a good lab/workshop/troops, and make every game different.

[AndyBrown]

I just want to add myself to the ranks of those requesting a tactical mission in-game save.

There are numerous reasons why this is necessary, the least of which is the wife calling me for dinner when I was half-way through clearing out some mine near Wellington.

As Kzwix points out, for something as important as this you should let the players decide for themselves what is fun.  A no-reload iron man-like feature is OK but it should be optional because some of us wimps like saving our tactical battles every minute or so.   I could do it in the original XCom - I strongly suggest I should be able to do it here.

Cheers,

Andy

[Czert]

Simply, put in-mission saving, but limit it to e.q only 3 saves per mission . This helps in emergency cases and to aviod frustration when you lost 3 peoples to last alien in 2 minutes, when you played current mission for 45 minutes and replying mission can only lead to more frustration.

[The Dude]

While I would prefer a save feature and optional iron man, I fear the developers decided already against. But what about an autosave evertime you exit battle which gets deleted after loading? I don't think any sane person would abuse this consequently by copying the file.

[ubequitz]

Many of the arguments put forward here for a battlescape save-game feature are very compelling and I doubt any of the devs would prevent such a feature from being added to the game (at least as an option). Certainly if we can get some bigger maps (i.e. longer missions) into the game then such a feature or a variation of this feature (save at way points or after certain events) would be very useful.